I tried to discern its desired direction based on the way it nudged against my fingers—weaving a crooked, confusing path through the jungle.
I began to get nervous, wondering if it was an ambush. If someone wanted to slaughter me to steal the Aether Stone, thinking it some priceless treasure and not the soul-sapping curse it is. But then I came to a dwelling carved into the cliff. A home so hidden away from the world that I suspect it would be impossible for anyone else to find.
Kaan was inside, sitting at a stone table he’d set for us, the air flush with the smell of colk and canit root stew.
He told me this place was his gift to me but that he didn’t have to come with it. That one word from me and he’d step out into the jungle and never return.
I was upon him before the sentence fully left his lips.
He’s fire and brimstone. I’m shattered ice. Our collision is steam and destruction, destined to dissipate, but I’ll gladly burn beneath him until the world comes crumbling down.
There’s a familiar male leaning against the stone wall with his back to me, a blaze of rebellious locks dashed around his shoulders.
“You look like you were dragged backward through a bush,” I say, striding toward Pyrok, the gifted mask upon my face like an elegant shield.
He spins, flashing me a teeth-glinting smile. “All part of my charm. Females love it. They tug on it like reins.”
“This one won’t be.”
His eyes widen. “Fucking hope not. I quite like my head. And my cock. And living.”
Clearing my throat, I pretend I don’t know exactly what he means, taking in the red leather tunic cut to emphasize his broad chest. The top half of his face is hidden behind a mask fashioned from the orange and red down feathers of a Moltenmaw, and he’s even replaced his piercings with ruddy ones to match. “So. Guessing you’re my escort?”
“Strictly platonic.”
“If you had more platonic relationships, perhaps your hair wouldn’t look like a bird’s nest.”
He smiles, digging his fingers into a small sack of something lumped in his hand. “Nice to see the hushling didn’t suck out your brain through your nostrils.”
“Shocking, I know.” I pause before the wall and set my slippers on the ground so I can readjust the material draped across my bust, making sure it’s keeping me well contained. “Who finger painted the warnings on the wall?”
“Veya.” My brows bump up, hands stilling. “Kaan lost it after you passed,” he says with a shrug. “She knew he’d have regrets if the place fell into complete disarray.”
“Oh,” I murmur, stashing that prickly parcel beneath my icy lake with the speed of a lightning strike. “So you knew me … before?”
“Little bit. It was a long fucking time ago—”
“You don’t remember much?”
“Quite the opposite,” he counters, winking at me. “My memory’s the sharpest weapon in my sparse armory.”
Right.
“Good for you.”
Mine, as it turns out, is quite shit. Not that I’m complaining.
He tosses a small red thing into the air and catches it with his mouth, crunching through it. “Wanna know anything?” he asks, a hopeful hitch to his voice that I squish before it can crawl up my leg and pinch me.
“Creators no. I was just curious.” Knowledge is power and all that. When I have Kaan erased from my memories, I’ll need to snip all tethers to the past me.
To Elluin.
That now includes Pyrok. Probably a good thing, since he’s really starting to grow on me.
He clears his throat, tugging the string taut on his treats like he’s suddenly lost his appetite. “Well,” he says, twirling his finger, a heaviness to his tone that wasn’t there before, “let’s see.”
I do a spin, my hair woven into a braid that starts at the crown of my head and brushes the bare skin at the small of my back, secured with one of the clamps I removed from the gown. A strip of gathered fabric is draped upon my breasts, others pulled tight across my hips before they fall in a gush of silver tendrils.
I’ve never worn something so fierce.
Flattering.
Sexy.
My favorite part is the twin triangles of sparkly sheer material tethered to my shoulders that chase me in a flutter of motion. Like wispy wings. Though I left Kaan’s málmr in the dwelling.
Felt safer there.
“It was hard to get the back panel clipped in place, but I think I got it right,” I murmur, glancing over my shoulder at it.
“Looks right.” He pockets his treats, gaze sweeping across my gown again. “Though it appears you’ve left half your dress behind …”
“I did,” I say, collecting my slippers before I kick my leg up over the wall. It’s hot, and I’ve grown accustomed to being naked in the bush—though I don’t tell him that.
All that fabric felt unnecessary, so I unclipped a few tendrils here and there. Crisscrossed some. Tied knots in a few places.
Released my inner crafty bitch and let her shine.
Pyrok chuckles, shaking his head. “Come on,” he says, strolling toward the city. “We’re missing out on all the fun.”
The esplanade is a riot of color and cheer.
We weave between a churn of eloquently dressed folk, masked kids darting around with sticks clutched in their hands—the long silver ribbons attached to the ends being twirled and flicked through the air. They roar like dragons as they chase each other. Catch each other.
Fall in giggling heaps of ribbons, feathers, and makeshift wings.
Everyone is masked, crafted masterpieces fashioned from all different materials. Moltenmaw feathers and the scales of Sabersythes. There are some made from sheets of copper bearing the dents from whatever tool was used to bang them into shape, others from slopes of pearl that trail tendrils about their jowls like the elegant Moonplumes.
We near a cart that appears to be offering free serves of prepoured Molten Mead, Pyrok going out of his way to snag a mug. “Want one?”
I lift a brow. “Bit early, isn’t it?”
He gives me a look of genuine bafflement before he drains the entire thing in three deep gulps. “To hydrate?” he asks, drying his mouth with the back of his arm as he settles the now-empty mug on the same tray, grabbing another. “Don’t think so. The sun’s fierce this dae. And even if it wasn’t, what better way to break my fast?”
I shake my head, hoping he knows somebody strong enough to scrape him off the pave later, morbidly aware of just how hard it is to get a body his size to budge.
Unless it’s in pieces.
We come to a path that shoots out from the shore and splits three ways, spearing toward a trio of risen platforms, each capped in a dome of shimmering air. Like bubbles large enough to house a small village were blown from beneath the splashing waves, paused midbirth, then solidified.
The domes look empty, my gaze cutting straight through what appears to be simple bulges of distorted air. The noise tells me otherwise, the space around me alive with the deep thump of drums and the drone of stringed instruments coming from ahead. Like the bows are being dragged across my ribs, planting the music inside my chest and making my blood sing.
Others siphon down the path ahead, the stone knobbled with disk-shaped shells. It’s almost flush with the Loff’s lapping surface, the folk traversing it appearing to walk on water as they glide toward the domes, some with crafted wings fluttering in their wake.
Pyrok offers me his arm, and I tuck my hand in the crook of it, my heart a blunt and indomitable hammer against my ribs. We come to the junction where the path splits three ways, sun beating upon my face while we pause.
“The three domes each house a faux representation of the different nesting grounds,” Pyrok says, gesturing from left to right. “Netheryn, Bhoggith, and Gondragh.”
Each path is saddled with an arch—the one on the left adorned with a twist of silver vines and white, frost-encrusted blooms, tendrils of mist leaking from their pointed petals despite the heat.
Netheryn.
The middle one is clothed in a burst of feather-tipped flowers that match the varying vibrant shades of a Moltenmaw’s plumage.